Driver Distraction in Commercial Vehicle Operations PRELIMINARY - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Driver Distraction in Commercial Vehicle Operations PRELIMINARY RESULTS FMCSA Webinar Richard Hanowski Rebecca Olson Joseph Bocanegra June 3, 2009

Acknowledgements  Research was funded by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration under Contract # DTMC75-07-D-00006 (Task Order #3)  Dr. Martin Walker was the Task Order Manager  Bob Carroll served as the TOM early in the project, and Terri Hallquist provided technical comments and advice  Trucking fleets and drivers who participated in the naturalistic truck studies 2

Presentation Overview  Project Objectives and Background  Key Literature  Overview of Naturalistic Truck Studies  Analysis Approach and Key Concepts  Research Questions  Summary Results  Recommendations and Conclusions 3

Project Objectives  Characterize safety-critical events and baseline epochs (non-events) that were recorded in the Drowsy Driver Warning System Field Operational Test (DDWS FOT) and Naturalistic Truck Driving Study (NTDS)  Focused on identifying driver tasks ● Secondary tasks: related to the driving task (e.g., turn-signal use, checking mirrors, checking speedometer, etc.) ● Tertiary tasks: not related to the driving task (e.g., talking on a cell phone, interacting with dispatching device, eating, etc.)  Classify driver inattention by conducting eye glance analysis 4

5

6

Background  41,059 people were killed in 2007 in road crashes ● 12% involved large trucks ● 9% were attributed to driver inattention (LTCCS, 2005)  Police accident reports are limited because data is retrieved after the fact ● Drivers may not remember details or may be hesitant to report; therefore, distraction-related crashes are thought to be under-reported. 7

What is Driver Distraction?  Driver distraction may be defined in many ways: ● “misallocated attention” (Smiley, 2005) ● “any activity that takes a driver’s attention away from the task of driving” (Raney et al., 2000) ● “something that distracts the attention and prevents concentrations” (Oxford Dictionary) ● “attention given to a non-driving related activity, typically to the detriment of driving performance” (ISO, 2004) 8

Driver Distraction Continued  Pettitt, Burnett, and Stevens (2005) ● Impact- on the driving task ● Agent- secondary/tertiary task ● Mechanism- compels driver to shift attention ● Type- compromising visual, cognitive, etc. functioning  Hanowski et al. (2001) ● Inattention + Critical Incident = Distraction 9

Key Literature  Treat et al., 1977 ● Used police scanners to identify crashes; went to scene of crash to collect information ● Human factors were most often cited as the cause (71 – 93% of the time), followed by environment (12 -34%) and vehicle factors (5 – 13%)  Goodman et al., 1999 ● Investigated NC police reports from 1989 to 1995 to determine rate of cell phone use during crashes ● Using a cell phone was the distraction reported most often during a traffic crashes  LTCCS, 2005 ● Crash investigation to assess causal factors for fatal crashes between 2001-03 involving large trucks ● Results indicate that 9% of crashes were attributed to driver inattention, 8% were attributed to an external distraction, and 2% were attributed to an internal distraction  Klauer et al., 2006 ● One of the first large-scale naturalistic data collection studies ● Collected data on 100 light vehicles over 18 months ● Results indicate that 78% of crashes and 65% of near-crashes involved inattention 10

What About Trucking?  Limitations of previous research ● Conducted on light vehicles ● Conducted using data from police accident reports  Current study aims to fill in these holes by using heavy vehicle naturalistic data ● Using video, able to determine what driver was doing prior to safety-critical events ● “Instant replay” 11

Overview of Naturalistic Truck Studies Drowsy Driver Warning System Field Operational Test (DDWS FOT)  Naturalistic data collection study in which data were collected for 18 months from 103 drivers ● Participated for an average of 12 weeks ● 2.2 million miles of driving Naturalistic Truck Driving Study  Naturalistic data collection study in Face View Forward View which data were collected for 18 months from 100 drivers ● Participated for an average of 4 weeks ● 735,000 miles of driving Right Mirror Over-the-Shoulder Left Mirror

Filtered Data Set  Trigger thresholds produced a total of 4,452 safety-critical events ● 21 crashes ● 197 near-crashes ● 3,019 crash-relevant conflicts ● 1,215 unintentional lane deviations  19,888 baseline epochs (normal driving) 13

Video Review  All safety-critical events and baseline epochs were reviewed  Determination made as to what driver was doing just prior to event onset (e.g., when lead vehicle began to brake)  Some events and baseline epochs involved drivers engaged in secondary and/or tertiary tasks ● Tertiary tasks b roken down into complex, moderate, and simple (Klauer, 2006)  Safety-critical events and baseline epochs that had an associated secondary or tertiary task were analyzed in detail 14

Data Analysis Methods  Odds Ratio – the possibility of some outcome (e.g., a crash) occurring when comparing the presence of a condition (e.g., CB use) to it’s absence  Population Attributable Risk – the incidence of a disease (i.e., a crash) in the population that would be eliminated if exposure were eliminated ● That is, if the PAR for eating while driving were 5%, then there would be 5% fewer crashes if eating while driving never occurred 15

Odds Ratio Calculations  Odds Ratio – way of comparing the odds of some outcome (e.g., a crash) occurring given the presence of some predictor factor, condition, or classification ● Comparison of the presence of a condition (e.g., CB use) to it’s absence Driver Inattention No Driver Inattention n 11 Incidence Occurrence n 12 n 1. No Incidence Occurrence n 21 n 22 n 2. n .1 n .2 n .. Odds Ratio = (n 11 )(n 22 )/(n 21 )(n 12 )  95% lower and upper confidence limits calculated  Odds ratios greater than ‘1.0’ indicate an increased risk of safety- critical event involvement 16

PAR Calculations  Population Attributable Risk – the “risk of disease in the total population minus the risk in the unexposed group” (Sahai and Khurshid, 1996) ● Where: P e = population exposure estimate (e.g., number of baseline epochs with complex tertiary task/total number of baseline epochs) and OR = odds ratio estimate for a safety-critical event  Calculated on all odds ratios greater than ‘1.0’ 17

Research Questions  Research Question 1: What types of distraction tasks (or behaviors) do CMV drivers engage in? And, are these tasks risky leading to involvement of safety-critical events?  Research Question 2: Do environmental driving conditions impact the engagement of tasks?  Research Question 3: What is the impact of distraction tasks on drawing the driver’s eyes away from the forward roadway? 18

SUMMARY RESULTS

Overview Finding: Is Distraction an Issue?  81% of the safety-critical events had some type of driver distraction All Safety-Critical All Vehicle 1 At-Fault Event Type Events Events All safety-critical events 81.5% 83.4% Crashes 100.0% 100.0% Near-crashes 79.1% 81.1% Crash-relevant conflicts 78.7% 83.0% Unintentional lane deviations 87.7% 87.7% 20

RQ#1- Key Distracting Tasks (Complex) Frequency of Odds Frequency of Task LCL UCL Safety-Critical Ratio Baselines Events Text message on cell phone 9.69 55.73 31 6 23.24 Other - Complex 3.10 32.71 9 4 (e.g., cleaning side mirror, rummaging through a 10.07 grocery bag) Interact with/look at dispatching device 7.49 13.16 155 72 9.93 Write on pad, notebook, etc. 4.73 17.08 28 14 8.98 Use calculator 3.03 22.21 11 6 8.21 Look at map 4.62 10.69 56 36 7.02 Dial cell phone 4.57 7.69 132 102 5.93 21

RQ#1- Population Attributable Risk Population Task Attributable Risk LCL UCL Percentage All Complex Tertiary Tasks 13.73 13.52 13.95 Interact with/look at dispatching device 3.13 2.84 3.42 Dial cell phone 2.46 2.02 2.91 Read book, newspaper, paperwork, etc. 1.65 0.96 2.34 Look at map 1.08 0.48 1.68 Text message on cell phone 0.67 0.29 1.04 Write on pad, notebook, etc. 0.56 -0.16 1.28 Use calculator 0.22 -1.00 1.43 Other – Complex 0.18 -0.99 1.35 (e.g., cleaning side mirror, rummaging through a grocery bag) 22

RQ#3- Eye Glance Analysis Methods  Eye glance analysis was conducted to measure inattention ● Safety-critical events: five seconds prior to and one second after event onset ● Baseline epochs: six seconds 23

Glance Definitions  Eyes off forward roadway : any time the driver is not looking forward, regardless of where he/she is looking  Number of glances away from forward roadway : number of glances away from forward roadway during 6 s event/epoch period ● Glance: any time the driver took his/her eyes off the forward roadway  Length of longest glance away from forward roadway : longest glance where the driver was not looking forward during the 6 s event/epoch period 24